More than 10,000 professional actors, musicians, writers, and other creators have signed a petition urging against the use of their work by AI for training without permission. The statement was written by British composer Ed Newton-Rex, who also organized the signature collection. Among the signers are well-known personalities such as Hollywood stars Kevin Bacon and Julianne Moore, musicians like Thom Yorke of Radiohead and Björn Ulvaeus of Abba, and authors Harlan Coben and Ted Chiang. The statement simply states, “The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.”
The signatories are concerned that their copyrighted works are being used without consent to train generative AI models behind various text, image, audio, and video creation tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Meta AI. They argue that this violates intellectual property laws and regulations.
In addition to individual celebrities, many organizations in the creative industry have supported the statement, including SAG-AFTRA, the American Federation of Musicians, Universal Music Group, and the International Publishers Association.
Compensation is also a concern, as seen with Meta paying celebrities to use their voices with its Meta AI assistant. Without proper compensation, issues arise, like when OpenAI was accused of replicating Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT in relation to the movie “Her.”
Newton-Rex, who previously worked on generative AI audio models at Stability AI, is well-versed in the AI space. He founded Fairly Trained, a non-profit that certifies generative AI companies for fairer training data practices, after leaving Stability AI due to concerns about its use of the fair use doctrine for training models.
The pushback against AI training is not new, with multiple lawsuits involving OpenAI and other AI creators facing legal challenges from writers and music industry organizations. These legal battles are part of the larger ethical and regulatory questions surrounding AI models and their training data.
While the impact on AI tools may not be immediate, the signers aim to spark a debate on ethical AI training and influence future regulations and laws in the industry. This, combined with the resolution of legal disputes and the implementation of new regulations, could shape how AI companies develop their models in the coming years and impact the compensation system for creative work.